Faith & Worship

The 40 years leading up to the Revolutionary War was a time known as the First Great Awakening. It was a time when the Holy Spirit moved through the 13 colonies like it did in Acts 2. The spiritual courage and dedication to fight for freedom were forged. One of its greatest preachers was George Whitfield, who also had a good friend, Ben Franklin. A delightful story is told by Franklin, who was listening to Whitfield preach, and knew the appeal for an offering to support the orphanage in Georgia would come at the end of the sermon.

“Dear IRS, I am writing to you to cancel my subscription. Please take my name off your mailing list.”

We read in Romans 13:8a, “Let no debt remain outstanding.” We know about money, and way too much about debts. This verse reminds us to pay our bills, as if we need any help remembering that. Most of us will probably agree that not only do we know a lot about money, we probably think too much about money.

As I finished up my seminary training and entered into ministry I was full of questions about the authority of scripture. Regrettably, I would pretend parts were not there that I didn’t like, “de-mythologize” other parts that seemed to be based on unscientific world views or superstition, and explain away parts that I disagreed with. With my background in Hebrew and Greek I could even overwhelm anyone who might disagree with me through my brilliance. All this fed my arrogance which made me a much less effective minister than I imagined in my own mind.

Two gas company service men, a senior training supervisor and a young trainee were out checking meters. They parked their truck at the end of the alley and then worked their way to the other end. At the last house a woman looking out her kitchen window watches the two men as they check her gas meter.

I am not sure where I found these, but I was entertained. Some people are kind, polite, and sweet-spirited, until you try to sit in their pews. Many folks want to serve God, but only as advisors. When you get to your wit’s end, you’ll find God lives there. People are funny; they want the front of the bus, the middle of the road, and the back of the church. Quit griping about your church; if it was perfect, you couldn’t belong. If the church wants a better pastor, it only needs to pray for the one it has. Coincidence is when God chooses to remain anonymous.

During one of his political campaigns, a delegation called on Theodore Roosevelt at his home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. The President met them with his coat off and his sleeves rolled up. “Ah, gentlemen,” he said, “come down to the barn and we will talk while I do some work.” At the barn, Roosevelt picked up a pitchfork and looked around for the hay. Then he called out, “John, where’s all the hay?”

Celebrities tend to misbehave in tiresome and predictable ways, like tantrums, affairs and addictions, and we tend to think they’re spoiled. But one psychiatrist, Cornell’s Robert B. Millman, says they’re not spoiled, they’re sick. The affliction is Acquired Situational Narcissism.

“Christianity is not a religion it is a dangerous mind-control program that encourages genocide.” “Christianity was made to brainwash. This is how people got power and money while others believed that all this was because they ‘served God.’ ”

“Then my father went on to tell me that I am going to pay, and how he is going to make my life a living hell, and started threatening me with a reversed mortgage when he dies.”